THE OVERALL IMPORTANCE OF THE HERMENEUTIC PACKAGE IN TEACHING MEDIATED INTERLINGUAL INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION1 Sergio Viaggio United Nations,

Vienna An introductory caveat The reader unfamiliar with my development of Garca Landas model and its symbols is advised to pay a preliminary visit to the Appendices. In the body of this paper I shall limit myself briefly to stress the relevant points and proceed to dwell on what, following Garca Landa, I shall call the hermeneutic package governing every single act of speech production and comprehension, and which interlocutors must share in order successfully to understand each other. The essentials of my development of Garca Landas model Garca Landa 1990 and 1998 understands communication through speech as the production of speech perceptions that he calls linguistic percepts (symbolised as LPs2). Let me remind us what he means: what a speaker means to say, his vouloir dire or meaning meant, comes to his conscience as a linguistic percept intended (LPI), that is, as it were, an amalgam of propositional and pragmatic content moulded by and articulated as speech. Such perception of what a person wishes to communicate to himself or others does not come from nowhere or for no reason at all: it is always the product of a conscious motivation governed by the speakers unconscious as a certain orientedness towards his addressee3 (which I symbolise respectively as W and Z) governing a main and a host of secondary pragmatic intentions (Yy). It is always a function of a complex system

1 Updated version of the paper submitted to the international seminar Training 2 3

Translators and Interpreters: New Directions for the Millennium, Vic 12-15 May 1999. In previous pieces (Viaggio 1998, 1999a, 1999b and 1999c), I followed Garca Landas own use of his acronym for espacio perceptual hablstico (EPH), which he has now abandoned. I borrow this term from Toolan 1996, who defines it as what any two people minimally require to understand each other. I stress here that kind of mutual orientedness which is inaccessible to the persons conscience, since what he is aware of can be subsumed in his conscious motivation.

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of relevant encyclopaedic entries or general pre-comprehension schemes (K)4, which are indispensable for understanding. Such a speech perception is normally couched in units selected from, and articulated according to, the different virtual systems of the same language; although it need not necessarily be the case. Following Garca Landa5, I find it convenient to distinguish four main elements within the linguistic chain: 1) its phono-morpho-semantic structure, governed by a certain virtual system L; 2) its semantic potential, governed by its own virtual system H; 3) its prosodic structure, governed also by its own virtual system R; and 4) its register Q6 one of several possible such registers. Thus, knowledge of L, H, R and Q equals knowledge of the global linguistic system (or subsystem) governing a specific utterance. This is not to be assimilated to the traditional, intuitive view: L, H, R and Q may correspond to a hybrid lect such as Spanglish or Creole, or any specific dialect or sociolect of a given language. People who have trouble with teen talk or professional jargons can be said to be basically H-deficient, whilst students who know English but find that they cannot understand the Irish or Australian accents, for instance, lack enough knowledge of the phonic component of the relevant L, and possibly also R. In this light, it stands to reason that an interpreter who is called upon to understand and eventually reproduce well nigh automatically all manner of geographical, social, professional and other lects must have a whole repertoire of the relevant subsystems of the hyper- or arch-systems L, H, R and Q of what we somewhat sloppily and a-critically call, for instance, the Spanish or English language. That with respect to language. As we know, utterances do not float in timeless ether nor are they produced or understood by isolated brains7. To 4 K stands, inter alia, for Malmkjaers passing theories, Seleskovitch and Lederers 5 6
savoir partag, or whatever it is that any two or more people need to understand each others LPIs. In his versions of 1990 and 1998, Garca Landa had not yet included prosody. On my part, I have added register. As pointed out above, the virtual linguistic systems according to which an utterance is articulated may or may not be that of a single language. More often than not, people, especially non-native speakers or translators and interpreters vulnerable to interferences from the original language will mix or combine the phono-morphosyntactic, semantic or prosodic systems of one language with those of another. It takes the mother to grasp the incipient still somewhat amorphous versions of the relevant systems her child is applying in its efforts to communicate through speech (in this respect, we can posit that mother and child share a unique code hermeneutically accessible to them alone). The above applies both to interpersonal communication and to inner speech, i.e. to the speaker communicating with himself - except that in order to make this meaning

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begin with, every act of speech is produced in a specific social situation governed by a more or less structured or loose, tacit or explicit, rigid or flexible system of more or less institutionalised practices, norms, rules and beliefs P8. And it is also governed by a system of specific, thematic and otherwise ad hoc knowledge, which Garca Landa calls its relevant world M; this applies as much to a formal meeting as to an interview with a social worker or a casual encounter. Mutual knowledge of these practices (most particularly of what Hatim 1997 calls sociotextual practices) and relevant world are also essential for communication to succeed. Thus, whilst K is the general extra-linguistic baggage people resort to for their myriad exchanges, P and M are the situationspecific elements of the hermeneutic package. (In the hermeneutic package you are applying in order to understand this paper, dear reader, K and M overlap almost completely except perhaps for the intrusion of the unconscious, imported from psychoanalytic theory, i.e. from K to M.) This distinction between P and M on the one hand, and between M and K, on the other (all of which, in actual fact, constitute a continuum with the other components of the hermeneutic package) serves the methodological purpose of distinguishing general from thematic knowledge, and thematic knowledge from the social norms pertaining to a given situation. From a different perspective, the Hallidayan notions of tenor and field parcel this continuum somewhat analogously: what is more relevant to this model (since it is not explicitly identified as a crucial element of P) is tenor the power relations between the different interlocutors, most particularly in the case of judicial and community interpreting. At the other end of this social process, applying at the same time retroactively and prospectively to the semiotic stimulus the filter of his own conscious (U) and unconscious motivation to understand (which, in order for comprehension to succeed, must of necessity be attuned to the speakers, wherefore both are symbolised as Z), and applying his own general precomprehension schemes and knowledge (which, again, in order for
meant accessible to others, the speaker cannot but reduce it to some kind of sensorial stimulus. Garca Landa and I are not interested in this stimuluss physical configuration as differences in air pressure or in its neurophysiological production or processing, but stress rather its semiotic, i.e. social essence and linguistic, paralinguistic and kinetic configuration as it is produced by the speaker in a specific social situation. By reducing simultaneous interpretation to a neurophysiological and cognitive process taking place as it were in a social vacuum, Giles efforts model ignores, precisely, the mediating effort: the assessment of the social situation and the aptest communicative strategies that it calls for. A good interpreter is doing more than simply comprehending, manipulating memory and producing utterances. Searles notion of background can be roughly assimilated to P.

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comprehension to succeed must coincide with those of the speakers, whereby both are symbolised as K), the listener perceives meaning meant as a new amalgam of propositional and pragmatic content moulded by and articulated by speech. This Garca Landa calls comprehended linguistic percept or LPC, i.e. meaning understood a perception that is the cognitive and pragmatic product of speech comprehension9, which in turn produces in the subject of comprehension specific a main and a series of secondary contextual effects (Aa) cognitive, pragmatic and even aesthetic. Garca Landa postulates that communication has been successful if and only if meaning meant as perceived by the speaker and by the listener are identical, i.e. if they are perceptions of the same social object, which in our case is always defined as an intended or comprehended LP10. Such identity can be empirically verified, if at all, at trivial levels; We assume that it must be and historically has been achievable often and effectively enough for the species to perceive, talk about, fight over and otherwise act upon the same world and thus survive through collective intentionality (Searle 1995). Even when communication fails, we can become aware of it and think, speak and eventually remedy any mismatch in our mutual perceptions of each others meaning meant. Together, K, P and M constitute the extra-linguistic half of the hermeneutic package. It is useful perhaps to explain why I think that Z has a place and a most decisive one at that in my development of Garca Landas model. This role is better described negatively: communication cannot be successful if the unconscious resistance to be understood or to understand is such that no amount of conscious effort will help - those of you who are married need no further proof. Motivations, intentions, and effects May I interpolate that if, as I have noted, speech acts are not produced in a social vacuum or for no reason at all, they are not without social consequences either: the subject of the comprehension experiences specific contextual effects. Strictly speaking communication can be said to have pragmatically succeeded if 9 Speech comprehension the mostly spontaneous and immediate seizure of meaning
meant is, of course, but the first Peircean semiosis (see Gorle 1994) produced through the hermeneutic package. Understanding that the plumber is telling us that we should change the pipes requires nothing beyond such an immediate semiosis. Further semioses may lead us to understand that he is cheating us, that he cheats because of some kind of psychological trauma, and so forth ad infinitum (the subject is specifically discussed in Viaggio 1999b). 10 The distinction is methodologically convenient, but in actual fact, even the speakers perception of what he means to mean is the result of a comprehension process. Only what we comprehend is accessible to our conscience: LPIs can only be postulated.

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the pragmatic effects of comprehension match the speakers pragmatic intentions (i.e. when an argument meant to convince actually convinces), but that is seldom the case. Pragmatic success can be more modestly described as the absence of obvious failure, i.e. when co-operation by one of the interlocutors is not inordinately weakened or cancelled by pragmatic obstacles (irritation and boredom most notably included). In any event, the mediator must be aware that sometimes perceptual identity (LPI=LPC) does not go hand in hand with pragmatic success even as so modestly defined. Of course, unless his loyalty lies squarely with the speaker, the mediator cannot take pragmatic sides; yet, in principle, it is nevertheless his duty to help avoid or minimise any unintentional mismatch between motivations, intentions and effects - i.e. between W and Yy on the one hand, and U and Aa on the other. It is up to him to determine the relative importance of LPI/LPC identity with respect to pragmatic adequacy. By pragmatic adequacy I mean an adequate correlation between the speakers motivations and intentions and the addressees motivations and the effects that comprehension has upon him. The mediator has as his fundamental pragmatic task to determine (and establish) relevant LPI/LPC identity. Such relevant identity may well be minus, as when propositional content deemed socially irrelevant or, worse, pragmatically counterproductive in the new situation is altogether omitted by the mediator; or it may be plus, as when information is added; or it may be zero, as when information is substituted, for instance in the case where an untranslatable or pragmatically inept joke is substituted with another. If the achievement or avoidance of certain pragmatic effects becomes the main mediating task, as is normally the case at the beginning of exchanges, when the interlocutors are simply breaking the ice and establishing the grounds for co-operation, then propositional identity is totally subordinate to pragmatic adequacy. Except in the most obvious cases, such as humour, many practitioners, especially in simultaneous conference interpreting, overlook the relative weight of the pragmatic component in communication and mediation. Trainers have thus the task to instil in the new generations a more modern, scientific, global view of mediation as translation plus", i.e. as not merely translation, but of translation that is pragmatically adapted to the social needs of mediation. As we have seen, mediation may sometimes become translation minus and even non translation. But this is the subject of another paper. Let us go back to the subject in hand. The hermeneutic package It seems obvious that linguistic knowledge on its own is never enough to infer an LPI (i.e. to get a relevantly identical LPC from any semiotic chain, whatever

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its degree of explicitness). Successful communication (both at the elocution and comprehension poles) requires an adept application of the general and specific, encyclopaedic, thematic and cultural knowledge that governs speech production and perception, fostered rather than impeded by the interlocutors conscious and unconscious sensitivity and predisposition. Resorting to the models parlance, we can therefore describe successful communication as a function of the linguistic and extra-linguistic hermeneutic package both consciously and unconsciously applied by either interlocutor in an act of speech. In order to succeed, communication necessitates of both interlocutors an adequate application of knowledge of the linguistic systems L, S, H, and Q, of the world at large K, and of the social practices and norms P and relevant world M governing a specific social situation, fostered by a positive unconscious mutual orientedness Z - or at least unfettered by excessive resistance. If this is so, it stands to reason that communication cannot succeed unless both the speaker and the addressee share this hermeneutic package. Any mismatches are bound to hamper or altogether prevent communication. This is crucial for the mediator: it is up to him to remedy or minimise, in so far as objectively and deontologically possible, any such mismatches. Successful mediated communication depends on the mediators adroit application of an adequate hermeneutic package in his double role as pole of comprehension in the original speech act and pole of production in the second one. The hermeneutic packages didactic significance It ought to be a truism that translation in general and interpretation in particular begin with having understood and end in having succeeded to communicate. This requires, of course, an adequate innate subjective predisposition, both emotional and cognitive that must be instilled and developed - students must be taught to think as translators and interpreters. In this respect, then, I submit that teaching translation and interpretation must begin by teaching how communication through speech works, what the conditions that must necessarily obtain are, how to determine that they are in fact in place, and how to help institute them or at least palliate their absence if they are not. In other words, the would-be translator or interpreter must himself understand what understanding is, and learn how to achieve it and promote it effectively. All our collective complaints about our students lack of passive language knowledge and active language competence, general culture and analytic capacity can be reduced to a single hyper-problem: a precarious and flimsy hermeneutic package, full of glaring holes and dangerously loose ends, sloppily applied. It also goes without saying, on the other hand, that expertise at understanding specific people and making oneself understood by specific people in specific circumstances, despite

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linguistic, cultural, psychological, political and other barriers, demands intellectual and experiential maturity: one cannot really expect to come across truly competent mediators at a very young age. This essential maturity requirement has lead to the widespread assertion that interpretation should be a postgraduate academic endeavour. Indeed, if simultaneous interpretation is taken for what it really is, namely the most demanding form of mediated intercultural interlingual communication from the cognitive and neurophyisiological point of view, then there is no reason why interpreters should be churned out in two to four years by the hundreds, with no intercultural experience, and both existentially and intellectually immature. But then there is no reason either for them to have to acquire such maturity studying something at best marginally relevant to mediating: if physicians and lawyers are not expected to mature elsewhere in academia, why then interpreters? Let interpretation be a postgraduate course at a school of interlingual intercultural mediation, not just an afterthought to other pursuits. That having been said, whatever the human material that may befall us, it is clear that our task can only begin to succeed if we manage to equip our students with a minimally adequate hermeneutic package or, rather, help them acquire it on their own and impart to them a minimally competent skill at applying it. This requires, above all, developing the habit of methodical analysis, i.e. teaching a hermeneutic method (with discourse analysis firmly rooted at its centre). In this, our main obstacle lies in the contra natura essence of translational comprehension. A mediator, by definition, is dealing with communication not addressed to him, in which he is not directly interested, either cognitively or, worse, emotionally. The main difference between a direct interlocutor and a mediator, then, lies in their respective attitude towards what is being said. We must teach our students to listen and read as if they were personally interested in the pragmatic and cognitive effects of comprehension. Unless these basic elements are reasonably in place, there is simply no hope that in whatever real or imaginary social situation pertaining at the moment, meaning as understood by the student will be relevantly identical to the speakers meaning meant. Then comes the second part. This meaning meant that is not meant for them and about which they tend not to give a hoot, our student must now transmute into their own meaning meant except that this new LPI must now be articulated in the target language. The turn has come for the student to make himself understood not in general, not in the abstract, but by a specific if imaginary audience (about which the student probably does not care a hoot either) endowed with their own adequate or inadequate hermeneutic package, which they will apply more or less competently or willingly, in part as a function of their own interests in or resistance to the contextual effects of having

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processed the stimulus provided by the mediator. Now, our student must speak as if he had his own personal stake in what he is saying, i.e. in the speech act that he initiates. As any other speaker, he too cannot but have a conscious motivation, governed by an unconscious motivation, governing in turn a main and a host of secondary pragmatic intentions. He must simply try and attune them to his function as professional mediator. At this point, his active competence to produce all manner of suitable linguistic utterances in the target language becomes indeed decisive but not much more than his ability to assess the audiences hermeneutic capability and willingness to co-operate, without which communication between him and them cannot succeed. Unless these complementary hermeneutic and heuristic competencies are reasonably in place, there is little chance a) that the student will have understood the speaker, b) that he will have adequately transmuted meaning understood into meaning meant, and c) that he will then manage to convey his meaning meant relevantly, i.e. in such a way that it can be properly and effectively understood by his audience without unnecessary or unjustified processing effort; so that e) his audience will end up relevantly understanding the meaning meant by the speaker . This, alone, is what successful mediation is about11 namely, bringing about relevant identity between the speakers LPI and the addressees LPC. Let me explain once again what I mean by relevant identity: 1) Rarely if ever do the motives that prompt a speaker to produce and verbalise a speech perception match the motives that move a listener to pay attention and try to understand it. To boot, in mediated interlingual communication not only is there by definition a total or at least partial absence of a shared linguistic hermeneutic package (otherwise why the need for a mediator?) but, more decisively, even if co-operation is fully in place, rarely if ever do the respective extra-linguistic hermeneutic packages overlap enough for full comprehension to be possible - or mutually relevant. The last and most difficult task to be taught and learnt is, precisely, that of mediating between people who, however bent on understanding each other, lack crucial elements of the hermeneutic package that makes such understanding possible, and, besides, have no fully shared assessment of relevance. How can a simultaneous interpreter let alone a student reach such a level of hermeneutic analysis and heuristic prowess... in the 250 odd milliseconds that equals real time in simultaneous interpretation? The model I propound here, I submit, helps visualise and stake out the road. This is, I think, its pedagogical 11 In our view, there is little point in researching speech comprehension and production
in translation or interpretation per se, as if it were a different animal. Rather, what translation and interpretation do indeed offer a researcher is a unique window into speech-related and cognitive processes and anomalies that are normally inaccessible in non-translational speech.

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usefulness, and on this basis I proceed to suggest that a particular approach be tried out. A new pedagogical approach The difficulty that comes immediately to mind when speaking about conference interpreting is the most apparent (but not, I dare venture, the fundamental one): that of medium- and short-term memory for consecutive interpretation, and of short-term memory and real time (including the overlapping of speech comprehension, processing and production) for simultaneous interpreting. Consecutive interpretation does not pose this latter contra natura problem (and, as such, it is cognitively easier), but introduces its own: the artificially long separation between comprehension and production (whereby it becomes cognitively more difficult)12. The only kind of interpreting that is free from both anti-natural demands is dialogic interpretation (the only form of mediation that, within the limitations of a persons hermeneutic package, can be performed naturally), whence its limited training value Unless, of course, the hermeneutic asymmetry is stressed, which demands an unnatural stretching of the students hermeneutic package and its heuristic application. This, I submit, could well be the most adequate beginning for professional training, of both interpreters and translators. If neurophysiologically simultaneous interpretation is the most demanding form of mediated intercultural interlingual communication, and if consecutive interpretation is the form that most unnaturally taxes medium-term memory and demands a new auxiliary, potentially distracting mnemonic technique, what about learning first to mediate interlingually and interculturally without additional unnatural demands and limitations? Only once the essence of mediating is more or less assimilated does it make sense to make it neurophysiologically more complicated. It should not take inordinately long. It bears pointing out that there is a crucial difference in the way the hermeneutic package needs to be accessed by the interpreter and the translator: real time. If the translator normally has enough time to access and extend his linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge as he is translating, i.e. by interrupting his work, what the interpreter cannot remember there and then is as good as nonexistent or worse. Often, awareness that he knows, say, a word or term that refuses to come to mind will distract an interpreter from the task in hand, whether it be understanding or speaking. That is why training, especially of 12 Which, by the way, should be a decisive argument against making consecutive an
eliminatory step before simultaneous, unless the problems lie in an obvious hermeneutic inanity rather than in memory or note taking.

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simultaneous interpreters, must pay particular attention to increasing the immediate, automatic accessibility of a rich and systematically organised hermeneutic package. Some suggestions In the light of the facts discussed above, may I put forward some basic suggestions that might improve interpreter training: 1) Stress from the very beginning and at all stages that mediating involves, on the one hand, the mediators pragmatic and cognitive hermeneutic ability to identify relevance a) for the speaker, b) for the speakers original addressees (individually and collectively), and c) for his, the mediators, own addressees (again, both individually and collectively). It also entails his heuristic competence to produce an optimally relevant series of speech acts himself, so that he can reasonably assume that within the subjective and objective limitations inherent to any act of interlingual intercultural mediation optimum relevant identity may be obtained in the end between the perception that a speaker wishes to convey and what the interpreters interlocutors perceive13. 2) Obviate any unnecessary complications due to the chronological distance or overlap of both speech acts and the reification of speech through writing until an apt hermeneutic method is basically in place (again, this should not take too long). At the same time, pull speaker and interlocutor culturally and socially further apart, thus honing the students mediating abilities. 3) Proceed to simultaneous interpretation with a clear awareness that a students ability to comprehend and produce speech must compete and overlap with his ability to mediate effectively.

13 It is worth noting that, barring the totally un-hermeneutical clozing (which may, perhaps help detect psycho-motor ability, though I doubt it very much), all the exercises I know of are hermeneutically oriented one way or another. As I see it clearly now, the common aim of all the ones I have suggested myself, from abstracting and condensing (Viaggio 1992b) to active inferring (Viaggio 1996a), through cognitive clozing (Viaggio 1992a) and sight translation (Viaggio 1995), and of my views on kinesics (Viaggio 1997) or the difficulties of metalingual use in simultaneous interpretation (Viaggio 1996b), has been systematising and developing the hermeneutic package and fostering its application except that until fairly recently I lacked a unifying model that could shed systematic light on all these different skills as applied to understanding LPIs in one language and facilitate their verbalisation in a new language as a function of the new hermeneutic package to be applied by the interpreters interlocutors.

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Conclusion Let me stress the obvious corollary of the model: communication theory as applied to mediated intercultural interlingual communication together with its simplest and most glaring and accessible application dialogic interpretation, should be taught at the very beginning. Unless the mediating essence of interpretation has been fully assimilated, it is premature to try and develop the specific cognitive and motor skills that distinguish consecutive or, especially, simultaneous interpretation from other forms of mediation. I, for one, find it unrealistic to teach simultaneous interpretation as an alternative to translation. It should come at the very end of a full relevant academic experience in mediated interlingual intercultural communication. As most of us advocate, selection at this stage must be fair and realistic: few students have the required congenital cognitive and motor disposition (like musicians or mathematicians, interpreters and translators are born after all!). I hope that my development of Garca Landas model may help set priorities right: ontologically and by the degree of neurophysiological14, cognitive and social complexity and difficulty of the tasks in hand. One thing, I submit, is certain: barring the mnemonic and psychomotor techniques specific to consecutive and simultaneous interpretation, the didactics of interlingual intercultural mediation boils down to getting students to develop their hermeneutic package, and to access and heuristically apply it ever more aptly and automatically. References Garca Landa M. (1990): A General Theory of Translation (and of Language), Meta, 35, 3, pp. 476-488. Garca Landa M. (1998): A Theoretical Framework for Oral and Written Translation Research, The Interpreters Newsletter, 8, pp. 5-40. Gile D. (1995): Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training, Amsterdam-Philadelphia, John Benjamins. Gorle D. (1994): Semiotics and the Problem of Translation. With Special Reference to the Semiotics of Charles S. Peirce, AmsterdamAtlanta, Ga., RODOPI. Halliday M.A.K. (1992): Language Theory and Translation Practice, Rivista internazionale di tecnica della traduzione, 0, pp. 15-26.
14 Lest it should not be clear, Garca Landa and I do not deny the value and usefulness of research into the neurophysiological and cognitive aspects of speech production and comprehension in general, and in translation and interpretation in particular: we simply insist upon putting the social horse before the cranial cart (for a detailed discussion see Viaggio 1996c).

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Hatim B. & Mason I. (1997): The Translator as Communicator, London and New York, Routledge. Malmkjaer K. (1993): Underpinning Translation Theory, Target, 5:2, pp. 133-148. Searle J. (1995): The Construction of Social Reality, London-New York, The Penguin Press. Seleskovitch D. & Lederer M. (1989): Pdagogie raisone de linterprtation, Paris, Didier rudition. Toolan M. (1996): Total Speech. An Integrational Linguistic Approach to Language, Durham and London, Duke University Press. Viaggio S. (1992a): Cognitive Clozing to Teach Them to Think, The Interpreters Newsletter, 4, pp. 40-44. Viaggio S. (1992b): Teaching Beginners to Shut Up and Listen, The Interpreters Newsletter, 4, pp. 45-54. Viaggio S. (1995): The Praise of Sight Translation (And Squeezing the Last Drop Thereout of), The Interpreters Newsletter, 6, pp. 33-42. Viaggio S. (1996a): Elementary, My Dear Colleague! Educating Our Students Guesses, The Interpreters Newsletter, 6, pp. 57-72. Viaggio S. (1996b): The Pitfalls of Metalingual Use in Simultaneous Interpreting, The Translator, 2:2, pp. 179-198. Viaggio S. (1996c): La ricerca sullinterpretazione simultanea vista dallesterno, in Nuovi orientamenti negli studi sullinterpretazione. Ed. by L. Gran & A. Riccardi, Padova, CLEUP, pp. 251-258. Viaggio S. (1997): Kinesics and the simultaneous interpreter: The advantages of listening with ones eyes and speaking with ones body, in Nonverbal Communication and Translation. Ed. by F. Poyatos, Amsterdam-Philadelphia, John Benjamins, pp. 283-294. Viaggio S. (1998): The Landa+Viaggio general theory and models of translation and interlingual intercultural mediation, TEXTconTEXT, pp. 177-211. Viaggio S. (1999a): Towards a More Precise Distinction Between Context and Situation, Intention and Sense, Rivista Internazionale di Tecnica della Traduzione , 4, pp. 1-26. Viaggio S. (1999b): The Teacher As Setter of Professional Norms. Some Thoughts on Quality in Simultaneous Interpretation, in Quality Forum 1997 Esperienze, problemi, prospettive. Ed. by M. Viezzi, Trieste, Universit degli Studi, pp. 101-119. Viaggio S. (1999c): Why Theory When the Phoenicians Made Do without a Compass?, Linguistica Antverpensia XXXIII, pp. 55-72.

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APPENDIX 1 The Garcia Landa Models as Developed by Viaggio a. The model of the act of speech (a general model of verbal communication) Garca Landas models of verbal communication and translation (initially formulated in his 1978 doctoral thesis and published in 1990 and 1998) are, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive, refined and rigorously formalised to date. In consultation and co-operation with him, I have developed and synthesised them into a mediation model. The versions discussed below are the latest. In its present form, the model of (successful) communication can be summarised as follows: 1) Every act of speech D (whether oral V, written T, or interiorised I) in a given language o is a social transaction whereby someone (the subject of production), out of a conscious motivation W, governed by an unconscious predisposition to communicate Z, with a main pragmatic intention Y and secondary pragmatic intentions y, wishes to communicate a perception LPI5 which is a function of a given set of pre-comprehension schemes, knowledge base or passing theories K. 2) To that effect, he sets in motion a complex mental operation which involves mainly constructing and presenting to his interlocutor(s) a finished social product which is a sign chain F in language o. Such a chain consists of a) a phono-morpho-syntactic structure X (actualising a certain phono-morphosemantic system L); b) a semantic potential S (actualising a semantic system H); c) a rhythmico-prosodic structure V (actualising a rhythmico-prosodic system R); and d) a register J (from a register series Q). This chain is also necessarily accompanied by a series of suprasegmental (paralinguistic or typographical) features C, and kinetic or graphic features E that reinforce, nuance or modify its sense. (In written and face-to-face oral communication, then, the stimulus triggering the comprehension process consists of three components: F, C and E, although the last one is lost in strictly acoustic communication such as radio, telephone, etc., often making comprehension more difficult.) 3) The speech act is carried out in a given social situation or socio-historical field G governed by a shared system of beliefs, norms and practices, or a certain shared life and personal experience P, within a given relevant world M, at a historic moment VH, and, within that moment, at a specific time t. (All components are characterised by specific set of features m, n, etc.). 4) Someone else (the subject of comprehension, who more often than not is the same person playing both roles, i.e. communicating with himself), is listening and understanding in a complex mental operation which results in

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his producing a perception LPCo, which is also a function of the same knowledge base K. In order to do so, he must build upon or overcome his conscious motivation or resistance U and be in turn governed by an unconscious predisposition to communicate Z. We should stress the active nature of comprehension, whereby the comprehender (re-)constructs his speech perception of the speakers meaning-meant retro-applying his own filters U, Z and K to the acoustic/optic stimulus [FCE]. Comprehension, moreover, produces upon him a main and secondary pragmatic effects Aa, which may or may not correspond to the speakers intentions. The key notion is that, whether written or oral, literary or not, a speech act is much more than its verbalised vehicle - which is, itself, more than its sheer linguistic chain. Resorting to the symbols alone (where > indicates determination, production and production through retro-projection; the mantissas represent the events and phenomena taking place in real space/time and the exponents the virtual systems or structures gravitating upon them) verbal communication is then formulated as:
D(V/T/I)o: WZ > Yy > LPIKo Fo(XmL,SmH,VmR,JmQ)CmEm]GPMVHtm UZ > LPCKo Aa

Communication will have succeeded if:

GPM (LPIo [=] LPCo)

b. The interlingual intercultural mediation model The truly expert interpreter, of course, does more than merely re-produce a speech perception: he mediates, he shuttles between the speakers lips and the addressees ears, modifying or altogether disregarding certain elements as a function of his own skopos. The mediator takes such liberties because he is a human being involved in speaking, as opposed to a machine receiving one code through its keyboard and producing another on its display. In this liberty lies the heuristic nature of his activity. As has often been said, the translator does not find equivalencies, he creates them each time he comes up with a verbalisation: an Fi which is the product a) of his comprehension of the LPIo his LPCo (the hermeneutic part of his task), and b) his analysis of the new communicative situation (K, G, P, M, VHt, UZ). Such an analysis may well lead him to modify even the intention or function of the original speech act. We are, in fact, still dealing with identity, except that now our aim is not so much global propositional and pragmatic identity but relevant identity, i.e. the necessary degree of perceptual identity (and it may be zero) that allows for the relevant correlation (NB, not necessarily correspondence) of the speakers and the mediators pragmatic intentions, on the one hand, and the contextual (cognitive

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and pragmatic) effects of comprehension on the other. On the basis of this relevance, the mediator operates a transmutation of LPCo into LPIi and produces his new chain Fi with all manner of trans-formations. Between what he has understood as comprehender of the LPIo and what he decides to convey as verbaliser of his LPIi lies the essence of the interpreters mediating activity: by transforming he exercises both his deontologically responsible freedom and his loyalty. In symbolic notation, the model of interlingual intercultural communication would look like this:
Do: WZ > Yy > LPIoK [Fo(XmL,SmH,VmR,JmQ)CmEm]GPMVHtm UZ > LPCoK Aa [] Di: [] WZ > Yy > LPIiK [Fi(XnL,SnH,VnR,JnQ)CnEn]GPMVHtm + n UZ > LPCiK A

Where the symbol [] stands for the adaptation that the mediator operates between LPCo and LPIi. Mediation succeeds when, within a given objective situation influenced by subjective emotional and cognitive factors, relevant perceptual identity [=] is established between what the speaker wishes to convey and what the interlocutor understands:
GPM (LPIo [=] LPCi)

This is, then, an ideal model of what may be heterofunctional/heteroscopic mediation, which posits as a felicity condition a relevant identity between LPIo and LPCi. Thus, it serves also as a quality standard, harmonising description and prescription: unjustified, avoidable deviations from global identity can be deemed to be methodologically wrong. To my mind, our models uniqueness is that it assimilates and dialectically develops all relevant attempts at defining and explaining translation (dynamic equivalence, thorie du sens, skopostheorie, etc.) encompassing and accounting for all of the relevant factors identified so far. Another advantage is its symbolic notation, which makes it possible to represent the relevant notions and their relationships directly and graphically, so that no time is wasted discussing names and definitions, which is the social researchers bane. As a matter of fact, the notions can be developed without changing the symbols.

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APPENDIX 2 The Symbols and their Definitions W Z Y y U A a LP LPI LPC K D F o i X L S H V R J Q C E G P M VH t n, m > Conscious motivation governing elocution. Unconscious mutual orientedness governing both interlocutors. Main pragmatic intention. Secondary pragmatic intentions. Conscious motivation or resistance governing comprehension. Main pragmatic (or contextual) effect. Secondary pragmatic (or contextual) effects. Speech perception - articulation of the propositional and affective content through speech. Intended speech perception - what the speaker means to convey. Comprehended speech perception - what is perceived by the comprehender. Relevant knowledge and pre-comprehension schemes. Speech act - V oral, T written, I inner, L reading. Linguistic-signs chain (utterance). Source language. Target language Phono-morpho-syntactic structure. Phono-morpho-syntactic system. Semantic potential. Semantic system. Rhythmico-prosodic structure. Rhythmico-prosodic system. Register. Possible registers (it is a moot point whether registers constitute a system). Paralinguistic (elocutional) o perilinguistic (typographic) configuration. Kinetic or graphic configuration. Socio-historic field. System of beliefs, experiences, norms and practices (culture or background knowledge). Relevant world. Historic time. Moment. Specific characteristics. Determination. Unidirectional production.

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= [=] []

Bi-directional production (retro-projection by the comprehender on the sensorial stimulus of his motivation/knowledge and its projection on the speech perception). Perceptual identity. Relevant perceptual identity. Transmutation by the mediator of the comprehended perception into intended perception (the basis of relevant identity).